Chapter Thirty
Alice was on her way to the hospital to help Jack check out when the email from the College of Arms in London arrived. Her phone dinged at a red light, and when she glimpsed the attachment icon, her heart leapt.
Finally—answers about the signet ring.
The ring itself was still missing, and Jack suspected one of the Tuckers had swiped it from his hotel room. At least this report might tell her where the ring came from—and who it had once belonged to.
At every stoplight, her fingers itched to tap the screen, to dive into the report, but she forced herself to wait.
This was something she wanted to share with Jack.
Her heart thudded as she pulled into the hospital’s garage, parked the car, slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, and all but jogged into the hospital.
Jack was half-dozing when she burst into the room, golf murmuring softly from the wall-mounted TV. A few yogurt cups sat on the rolling table across his lap. He blinked awake as she swept in.
“Jack! The report’s here—the one from London about the ring. I haven’t opened it yet. I wanted to wait.”
He sat up straight, instantly alert. “About time,” he said with a grin.
For a man who once had no appreciation of history, he’d certainly grown fascinated with the Roost and the signet ring.
With an underhanded toss, he flung the yogurt containers toward the trashcan.
They landed inside with a satisfying clatter.
“Let’s get cracking,” he said, slapping the tabletop with open palms. “I’ve been dying to read that thing.”
She slid the laptop onto the table, angled the screen so they could both see, and opened her email.
The report was brief, but packed with insight:
The coat of arms on the signet ring you have submitted was granted by His Majesty Henry VIII in 1536 to the Denby family. The rearing stag was the traditional emblem of the Denby family. The scallop shell pattern on the ring’s shank is a symbol of Christian faith.
In keeping with the family’s tradition, the number of acorns surrounding the stag signify one acorn for each generation. This ring has six acorns, meaning it belonged to the sixth Lord Denby since the granting of the title. Thus, the ring most likely belonged to William Reid Denby, 1615–1659.
William Reid Denby was listed on the death warrant signed by Charles II following the king’s restoration. His death in 1659 spared him arrest and execution for treason.
“Good heavens,” Alice whispered, rocking back in the chair in amazement. “The owner of our signet ring was a regicide.”
Jack looked at her in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
The pieces were falling together. Sebastian had told her how Charles II granted amnesty to everyone who fought on the Puritan side except for the fifty-nine men who voted for his father’s execution. For them there was no mercy.
“Charles II spent more than a decade in exile after his father was beheaded during the Puritan Revolution,” she told Jack.
“After he was restored to the throne in 1660, he wanted revenge against every man who signed his father’s death warrant.
Any regicide who was captured was put on trial, then they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. ”
Jack looked skeptical. “How did his signet ring get to Virginia? The guy died in 1659.”
It was a good question. That ring went into the wall in 1661 when the house was built. “There must have been a relationship between Reid Santos and William Reid Denby,” she said. “The name Reid is somewhat unusual for the time. He might have been an illegitimate child?”
“But why did the ring come here?” Jack pressed. “And why go to such trouble to hide it?”
Alice’s heart began to pound and her palms tingled. “Santos means saint in Spanish. The Puritans called themselves ‘the Saints’ during the English Civil War, and William Reid Denby was a highly-placed Puritan, probably a member of the parliament.”
If he was to escape the wrath of the king, he would have needed a new name. More pieces started falling into place in her brain and a slow smile spread across her face.
“Reid Santos and William Reid Denby were the same person,” she said. “And he didn’t die in 1659.”
Jack nodded, his eyes alight. “He faked his death, and his family covered for him,” Jack said.
“They wrote a fake date of death on his tombstone when it became obvious that Charles was going to retake the throne and was out for blood. Helga probably backed the story and helped spread a story that William was dead . . . but in reality he fled to Virginia, still an unsettled and dangerous wilderness.”
“Too dangerous to bring his wife,” Alice said.
The story seemed wildly dramatic and still had holes.
She stood and began pacing. “If William Reid Denby was a Puritan, why wouldn’t he have gone to New England?
Massachusetts was settled by Puritans who would have been sympathetic to his cause. Virginia was settled by Royalists.”
Jack clapped his hands together and flashed a roguish grin.
“Nope! Virginia makes perfect sense. Nobody would be looking for him here. If William Denby was well known among the Puritans, all it would take was for a single person in Massachusetts to recognize him and turn him over to the Crown for a fat reward.”
It was making sense to Alice. “So he came to a place nobody would recognize him,” she continued. “He made up a fake name and lived happily ever after. It’s why I couldn’t find a birth or death record for Reid Santos in England, because there never was a Reid Santos . . . only William Reid Denby.”
If anyone had good cause to disappear, it was a man the king of England wanted to see hanged, drawn, and quartered. Charles II vowed he would never call off the search until every person who signed his father’s death warrant was made to pay the ultimate price.
Jack leaned over the laptop to study the photograph of the signet ring. “All those religious symbols show Denby’s loyalty to the Puritan cause. It looks like our man was one of the bad guys. A regicide on the run.”
She released a heavy sigh. A man who carved his wife’s name into window glass?
She didn’t want to believe it. “There were a lot of good Puritans,” she said.
“Had the war turned out differently, William Reid Denby would have been considered a hero. The Puritans started out with noble intentions. They wanted a fair and representative government. They wanted to curb the abuses of wealth and believed in universal education, even for women! Once they got into power, they started implementing all those things. History is written by the winners, and the Royalists ensured that the Puritans were remembered not for their reforms, but for their most egregious abuses.”
Jack leaned back against the pillows and looked at her with a speculative gaze. “So you think Helga was the Widow Santos?”
“Probably,” Alice said. “The letter I found said Helga sailed to Virginia because she still had hope for a child. It’s sad that it never happened for her.”
“How can you be so sure about that?” Jack asked.
“Because the Roost and all its contents were sold at auction in 1705. Courthouse records indicate the Roost was owned by the Widow Santos, but she had no children so it was put up for auction after she died.”
Jack continued to stare at the image of the ring on her laptop monitor, his expression growing darker. “I want to know who has that ring.”
“I’ve already reported it to the police,” she said. “Every pawn shop in a fifty-mile radius will be on the lookout for it.”
“I don’t think it’s going to show up at a pawn shop,” Jack said. “I think one of the Tuckers took it. They know its historic value and had access to my room. I’m going to get it back.”
Right after he was released from the hospital, Jack asked Alice to drive him to Kyle Tucker’s fancy art gallery. It was in the rich part of Williamsburg, crammed with snooty cafés and antique shops.
“Please be nice,” Alice cautioned as she scanned the street for a parking spot.
“I’m not feeling nice,” he replied. “I have a hunch Daisy’s got her hands on my ring.”
“She claimed not to know anything about it,” Alice said, slowing down to ease her car into a tiny spot.
“And you believed her?”
“I suppose,” she said with an uncertain shrug.
Alice was too sweet to risk an ugly confrontation, but Jack wasn’t.
Somebody swiped a historic relic, and he wanted it back.
Responsibility for the security of his hotel room began and ended with the Tuckers.
He’d make Kyle launch a search to identify everyone who had access to his room.
The Tucker Gallery took up two storefronts, the display windows filled with Old World furniture, highboys, and elegant writing desks.
Alice walked ahead to hold the heavy glass door for him as he navigated inside.
It was hard to project an intimidating aura while tottering on forearm crutches, but he’d get the job done.
Inside, the gallery smelled like old leather, lemon polish, and a whole lot of money.
Silver candlesticks and gilt-framed mirrors gleamed.
Jack peeked at the tag on a spindly-looking chair.
It was a Hepplewhite chair, circa 1760. Who would pay four thousand dollars for a chair that looked too fragile to sit on?
“Remember, don’t accuse him,” Alice whispered. “We don’t want to offend them because they might be completely innocent.”
“Can I help you find anything?” An elegant gentleman in a bow tie and with a priestly demeanor had materialized beside him.
Alice stepped in front of Jack before he could answer. “Hi, Winston. We’re looking for Kyle. Is he in today?”
“Absolutely. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Winston disappeared behind a tapestry curtain covering a rear hallway. Jack made a beeline to a glass display case filled with vintage jewelry, scanning the velvet cushions quickly. Pearls, cameos, gold pocket watches, lots of jewelry … but no seventeenth-century signet ring.
The tapestry flipped away from the back hall and Kyle came striding forward, monocle in place, his white teeth displaying perfect veneers as he smiled. “Alice! Oh, and Jack . . . it’s good to see you up and about. Healing nicely?”
Jack’s gaze slid down Kyle’s sports jacket to land on his right hand. “You’re wearing my ring,” he said bluntly. On his pinky finger, too! The Denby signet ring had been polished and now gleamed in the dim of the shop. Kyle looked completely unruffled.
“If you check the paperwork of our agreement, you’ll see that this ring actually belongs to the Tucker family.”
“How do you figure?” he bit out. “That agreement stated that in exchange for paying your debts, I took ownership of the Roost, the five acres it sits on, and everything inside it.”
Kyle gave a gentle laugh. “That’s not the agreement I’m referring to. It’s the hotel bill. The fine print on the hotel agreement says that any guest who walks out on their bill, leaving property in the room, is subject to having that property seized.”
“But, but . . .” Alice sputtered. “But I worked out a deal with Daisy! Jack was unconscious and I checked him out of the hotel. He shouldn’t have had to pay for those days he wasn’t staying there, and she agreed.”
Heat began to simmer beneath Jack’s collar. He grasped the handles of the crutches, wishing he could punch the condescending look off Kyle’s face.
Kyle gave a sad shake of his head. “Daisy’s sympathetic gesture had no legal bearing on the contract. She cleared the bill, but that didn’t void Jack’s responsibility for paying it. But look! I’m happy to take the ring as compensation.”
The self-righteous expression on Kyle’s face made Jack clench and unclench the grips of his crutches. Physical fights were off-limits to a hemophiliac, but Jack was good at fighting with his intellect.
“I will gladly sue you to kingdom come,” he said quietly. “I already own a third of your family’s golf course, and if you challenge me, I’ll go after you for the rest of it. I didn’t sign any agreement with Daisy—”
“But you didn’t contest it once you were conscious again,” Kyle interrupted. “That’s a token sign of consent.”
“A jury of our peers will side with me ten times out of ten.”
“There won’t be a jury trial,” Kyle said. “The fine print on the hotel contract you signed requires arbitration, to be decided by a judge. And the law is quite clearly on the hotel’s side.”
Jack faked a patient smile. “One of the things I’ve learned about the Tuckers since I’ve been here is that they don’t like anything that puts the family in a bad light.
I’ve never been burdened by that weakness.
There were a couple dozen witnesses when I found that ring, and local news reporters love this kind of gossipy story—”
“You’re not listening,” Kyle said. “The terms of the hotel contract are quite clear, and we’ve won every time we’ve gone to arbitration. Don’t waste your money hiring lawyers over an antique of piddly value.”
The problem with people like Kyle was that he was used to hiding behind lawyers, fine print on contracts, and his family’s reputation. Jack intended to render those defenses useless. He affected a congenial tone that still had a bite just beneath the surface.
“You’re right, Kyle,” he said. “This case doesn’t belong in a judicial courtroom; let’s take it to the court of public opinion.
I’d love to hear what the local newspapers will think about how your wife stole a ring from a man who was fighting for his life in a hospital bed.
In fact, why stop at the newspaper? I’ll talk to the local radio stations, the TV news, the town halls and neighborhood associations.
Heck, the college is back in session, so I’ll sponsor a letter-writing campaign or maybe put some flyers up at the tourist hotspots. ”
It didn’t take long for Kyle to cave like a house of cards. Ten minutes later, Jack walked out of the shop with the Denby signet ring back on his finger where it belonged.